Shigeru Miyamoto Talks Wii U

Share.

Find out why Nintendo waited so long to go HD and more.

By Audrey Drake

In a recent Game Informer interview with Nintendo developer Shigeru Miyamoto, the mastermind behind Mario and Zelda shared some thoughts on the company's next home console. When asked why Nintendo waited until now to release an HD system, he responded that it was something they were considering back when they were first working on the original Wii.

For several reasons the company opted not to go HD at that time, but as the penetration rate of HD televisions continued to grow (much more rapidly than they intended), they realized their next system would have to have it. "We've seen the increase in HD TVs be very dramatic, so we felt this time is was important for us to include HD functionality in the system," Miyamoto-san said.

As for whether developers would be required to utilize the Wii U controller's touchscreen, he responded that, "We're not going to set any requirements in terms of how developers have to adapt the functionality of the controller to their games." He elaborated that he believes most developers opted to use the Wii's motion controls because "the number of buttons on the controller was somewhat limited compared to what developers were used to developing for." He said that developers probably felt they had to use motion controls to allow for the variety of gameplay they wanted to implement.

The Wii U controller, of course, is set to fix that issue. "Yes, it does have motion control and it does have a touch screen, but it also has a full complement of buttons to go alongside that," he said. "So it's really going to be up to the development teams to decide if they want to take advantage of button control, motion control, the touch screen, and they'll be able to leverage their own creativity and find the gameplay style that's going to be best suited to the games they're developing."

Miyamoto-san also revealed why it's been so long since we've seen an atomic purple console on the market. While he personally enjoys using a variety of colors in Nintendo's hardware, the company has found that bright, crazy colors have caused some people to peg their systems as more kid-oriented.

"So really what we looked at is what are some ways from a design perspective that we can make the system appeal to all ages?" he said. "One of the ways that we found to best do that is to minimize the use of color." Going all black or all white seemed the natural choices, and their research showed that an all-white system has a broader appeal, thus the Wii.